Graduate test format to become more difficult after revisions

BOSTON – After the Educational Testing Services abandoned a $12 million project to drastically overhaul the Graduate Record Exam, the organization said it will instead make gradual changes next month to install a much more rigorous test. \nStarting in November, graduate school applicants will face complex text-completion and manual numeric-entry questions, two features designed to better test critical thinking skills and prevent cheating in the verbal and quantitative sections, Educational Testing Services spokesman Tom Ewing said. \n“We want to test out these questions first and make sure that there is no bias towards any racial or gender group,” Ewing said. “There is no need for students to be upset.” \nEwing said changes include eliminating the verbal analogy questions and lengthening critical-reading passages. \nAfter repeated delays, Educational Testing Services announced in April it scrapped plans to change the GRE from a Computer Adaptive Test, in which students would have had to answer progressively difficult questions based on their performance, to one that requires every test taker to answer the same questions. The original plans to revise the test were designed to prevent cheating off foreign Web sites, Ewing said. \n“Security is only an issue in Korea, Taiwan and China,” Ewing said. “These new question types, which are constructed responses rather than multiple choice, will make it more difficult to memorize answers posted on Web sites in Asian countries.” \nRobert Schaeffer, a spokesman for FairTest, a Massachusetts-based advocacy group that monitors fairness in standardized tests, said cheating on high-stakes exams is prevalent everywhere. \n“No matter what ETS says, security issues can never be completely addressed,” Schaeffer said. \nSchaeffer said the GRE is a poor barometer for judging students’ ability to succeed in graduate school with or without the revisions. \nRiebeil Durley-Petty, a second-year Boston University journalism graduate student, agreed. \n“I graduated magna cum laude from college but did not do so well on the GRE,” Durley-Petty said. \nKaplan instructor William Marcellino commended the Educational Testing Service’s decision to refrain from totally reworking the exam. \n“Too much change upsets test takers and admission officers,” Marcellino said.